give a little time to me, or burn this out
by but we lost ourselves
Summary: the one where Zach wonders how he got a clock stuck in his head and what on earth he can do to get it out / also the one with a lot of fluff and a lot of angst


**another day, another oneshot. love you guys.**

Some days, Zach wondered how he'd ever gotten a clock permanently stuck in the back of his mind. All days, he wished he could smash it.

He often wondered how he'd become a living, breathing thing. How someone could be born, when the person's gene donors had so much hate coursing through their veins. And then, sometimes, he wondered how he managed to not end up the same way.

He'd catch the gleam of sun on blonde hair or see the ocean in its hazy greenish blue, and then he'd know that that was a stupid, wasted contemplation. The answer to that question was right there, beside him most days, and within his soul all days.

She had a way of doing that, with her shy smiles and her pink cheeks and her bit lips. She rested, consumed, _became_ his soul. He wasn't sure that he minded. He wasn't sure that he could. Not when she'd saved it—saved him.

He'd started losing time well before she had, but not in the same way. It started in an elevator, with a half-eaten bag of M&Ms.

No, she didn't want the strange boy's M&Ms. Of course she didn't. But, he was thinking, it probably was a good thing, because even though the air was frigid in D.C. mid-January, he'd been keeping warm keeping up with her, and they'd been in his pocket all day and they were probably pretty melty and that would be gross and embarrassing and, oh, had the elevator already hit the top, and damn it, Zach, what just _happened_ to you? Get it together. What the fuck?

There was something in her eyes. They made his internal clock stop, just for a bit.

There was something in her touch that made it speed up and slow down at the same time, like the force of each of her breaths pushed the second hand forward in time, and then it forgot to work, and time stopped again until she leaned back and breathed again, and then there was a fracturing second of speed-up-Zach-there's-a-reality-and-it's—

Her lips had a way of saying shut up to his mind in the gentle press and pull of 'Take a breath,' and 'I'm here, we're safe,' and 'I love you.'

Her lips had a way of saying all of these things without her voice actually speaking them at all. He thought it was probably because his mind had a way of appreciating implied, inherent truths more so than trusting things that were spoken.

He'd been told too many lies in his time. And she knew that, like she knew that he was secretly claustrophobic in low-ceilinged places, like she knew he hated sweet potatoes except in sweet potato pie, like she knew that he had nightmares most often on Thursdays—actually, every Thursday, though she _didn't_ know the reason for that trend, only the implications.

Zach had sworn that he'd never let a single person know so many things about him. But what could he do? Everyone knew _something_ about everyone they interacted with. She'd never know everything, but she knew him better than he knew himself, and he'd sworn that thing so long ago, but now he didn't really care. He couldn't bring himself to care at all, actually.

Except to worry. He worried what knowing so much would do to her. To _her_ , not to him. For the first time, he was worried about something more than anything else in the entire world—even himself.

* * *

It was torture, waiting for her from across rooms. She would come to him—she always did, even if it was four in the morning, her hair was falling out of its pins, and she was tripping over her dress and out of her heels on the way to their bed. She always would come.

But tonight was especially hard. She had _that_ look about her—the one that screamed 'come over here and drag me home with you.' But he couldn't, and he wouldn't, because there was a blonde man with blue eyes (all blonde men were douches, Zach decided) staring at her like she was his next meal, and Zach, despite all of his mental denial, knew that the man was right.

If this wasn't a honeypot, Zachary Goode's mom wasn't an insane international terrorist.

He had to keep his thoughts light about it all. He loved this woman more than the stars loved the moon, and he was pretty sure the fact that his mom _was_ an international terrorist was the only reason he wasn't killing that blonde man with his own cuff links for staring so blatantly at Cammie's ass.

Cam's ass _was_ something to stare at, though, Zach thought, and so he distracted himself further by the way her hips shifted under the obscenely flattering emerald silk, and the way her lower back was pale and smooth as porcelain, and didn't think about how the blonde guy would know that almost as well as he did by the end of the night.

The green dress was a nice touch, though, Zach thought sarcastically. Her favorite color, because it was the exact shade of the look in his eyes when he was in love with her, she said, which he didn't understand. He'd been in love with her since an extra long elevator ride under the Washington Mall, and so he didn't think she'd ever had the chance to see his eyes any _other_ color.

They were blue, sometimes, he was told, when he was close to the ocean, and he was missing a girl with music for a laugh who had managed to disappear from him again.

She'd always do that, he thought as the blonde man led her away from the crowds. Zach clenched his fists and his jaw and pretended to not miss a step in his waltz with the first daughter of so-and-so. She'd always be disappearing, and he'd always be chasing her, trying to find her, loving her so much that he was in physical pain.

No, maybe that was just the dancing girl stepping on his foot, hoping he'd quit staring at others when she was _right there_ , begging to be noticed by the most handsome man in the room, whose arms were around her, but whose mind was dancing away with someone else.

Zach hated himself for being insensitive sometimes.

And maybe he would be, in the bright morning hours, when he pretended to still sleep while she slipped into bed beside him, pretending that she hadn't just given what belonged to Zach and Zach only to a strange man who had a penchant for killing people, and crying by herself when she couldn't lie anymore.

She owned Zach, but Zach would never own her. No, not really.

He tried not to care.

But then he would open his eyes, and roll over, and see her crying, and he would hold her and dry her tears and love her and his heart would break and burst all at the same time because, god, it was so hard to love someone when you were both being continuously shattered on the floor because of it.

He loved her anyway.

And she loved him, with the sparkle in her eye when she slapped his ass as he flipped pancakes and tried to help her not burn the bacon without her knowing he was helping.

She loved him with blushes and bitten lips when he couldn't say anything but the ever-so eloquent 'holy fuck, you're beautiful,' on a day she wore a long white dress, and their hearts ached together for something they couldn't have. No, not yet.

She loved him with slowing time and soft touches and comforts in the middle of the night when nightmares had chased dream-Cammie away from him forever.

God, she loved him better than anyone had ever loved anyone before.

And she came home broken and sobbing and the deputy director of the CIA gave her a medal for a mission that she'd gotten pregnant trying to complete, and it was not Zach's child, and she wanted to kill herself for being so unfair to him, because he deserved so much better.

His best friends were marrying her best friends and the man that raised him had married her mom and his dad had married her aunt, and there were so many kids and so many baby bumps, but he was twenty eight and she was twenty seven and they weren't married and she was pregnant with a kid that wasn't his and she couldn't do this she couldn't do this she couldn't do th—

His hands were shaking as he took the gun and sat it on the floor and pulled her into his lap and his entire body was shaking as he rocked her and saw the white stick and the plus sign and the tears that meant it was all over.

This was all over.

It wasn't his DNA in the child, no. But it _was_ his child because it was _hers_ and this was their saving grace, couldn't she see that? This meant that there would be no more missions, at least for a long, long while.

He'd been a chief investigator for the FBI for two years, and his job was stable, and it was safe compared to what hers had been, and she would never have to work again if she didn't want to.

It was a long pregnancy, and he'd walked in just in time and taken guns and pills and knives and known that they couldn't go on living like this. They couldn't, or she wouldn't go on living at all.

He'd forgiven her, but that didn't mean that she would ever forgive herself.

* * *

He took time from work. A year's worth. It was unpaid, but who cared, and they traveled to places where there were no pills and no guns and no knives and no time and only his love, and hers, in a broken way.

And then in an unbroken way, one day in Bangkok, when he was haggling with a street vendor over a mango—she'd been having cravings— and his eyes were that green, after they'd been blue for so long, and his hair was curling over his ears because he needed to have it cut, and he was four days into his scruff, and his muscles were rippling in the summer heat under his thin grey tshirt, and his Thai was swimming with Sanskrit because he was a bit rusty on these languages, but he wanted to get her that mango cheaply so damn badly.

She took the hand that he had been gesturing with, and smiled at him slowly when he glanced at her in alarm, and she was blushing and biting her lip, and her eyes were sparkling for the first time since that day with the pregnancy test, and she was beautiful there, truly happy for once in months, glowing in six months of pregnancy and showers of love from a man who had a ring in his pocket, just waiting for this moment.

Their 'just hitched' getaway car was an elephant, and only Liz and Preston had been able to fly in for the wedding, but they were so incandescently happy that it didn't matter.

They honeymooned in Australia, though she said it was a ridiculous thought, because they'd, well. None of this was new to them, and it hadn't been for a decade now, and she was round and bloated with pregnancy. But he'd insisted—she was more beautiful, more desirable, more lovely now than she had ever been, and he wanted time to make her understand that.

And understand, she did.

So, they settled back into a new place—their D.C. apartment didn't have enough room to start a family, so they'd found a large plantation house in Virginia with sweeping wrap around porches and white siding and tall ceilings that would echo with the pitter patter of little feet, and they prepared for their new lives to begin.

* * *

The baby was a girl, and was the picture of Cammie, and everything about her was perfect.

Zach's heart—Zach's clock stopped in that moment. The one that was the most beautiful he'd ever seen. Cammie exhausted and sweaty, crying and laughing, and their daughter, eyes still closed and breathing the first air of this world that she would light up with only her smile.

Yes, he thought as he took her from the doctor and presented her to his wife, she was one hundred percent Cammie. And she was one hundred percent his, DNA be damned.

They sat together on Cam's tiny bed in the maternity ward and they held their entire life in their arms.

"Zach," Cammie started softly, running a finger down the little girl's soft red cheek and turning her face to kiss his jaw.

His eyes fluttered at the sweet contact, and he thought that he had never been good enough to deserve all of this. "Yeah, Cam?"

"What time was she born?"

"What?" He was having a hard time processing anything but the wife by his side and the daughter she was cradling.

"What time was she born? I was a bit too preoccupied to take note," she chuckled, and her eyelids fluttered in exhaustion. She was about a minute from being asleep, and he didn't blame her. The labor hadn't been easy, and she had given it her all, as she did with everything.

He took their daughter—Gillian Morgan Goode, they'd named her—and stroked the hair back from Cammie's forehead.

He started to answer her question off of the top of his head, but then had to pause and think a bit harder.

"You know. I don't know, Cam. I have no idea."

And then, time began to fly.

 **leave me some love (or hate, i'll take that too)**

 **also, i seem to be on a roll with the oneshots lately, so if anyone has a prompt, i'll be glad to take it and see what i can do.**

 **-Inez**


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